GoAERO Announces Stage 2 Prototype Winning Teams, Inspiring Creation of Emergency Response Flyers

Eight Stage 2 pro­to­type win­ners have been announced by the GoAero Prize, the inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion com­mit­ted to inspir­ing the cre­ation of Emer­gency Response Fly­ers which res­cue peo­ple in dan­ger and respond to dis­as­ter wher­ev­er it is found.

The win­ning teams were announced yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) and are based in the USA, UK, Ger­many and the Nether­lands. They will all fly their air­craft at a Final Fly Off at NASA Ames Research Cen­ter in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, which is sched­uled to take place in Feb­ru­ary 2026.

Addi­tion­al­ly, each team will receive a total of $320,000 in GoAERO awards, as well as sup­port from com­pa­nies such as NASA, RTX, Hon­ey­well and more than 20 oth­er organ­i­sa­tion­al part­ners.

The 8 pro­to­type win­ners are:

• CraneAERO — Cran­field, UK
• Ele­vate — Delft, The Nether­lands
• Har­mo­ny — Texas, US
• HORYZN — Munich, Ger­many
• LIFT + UT Austin / Texas Aer­i­al Robot­ics — Texas, US
• Res­cue Pack — North Car­oli­na, US
• Sote­ria — Penn­syl­va­nia, US
• VSDDL — Alaba­ma, US

The pro­to­type win­ners announce­ment comes on the heels of a his­tor­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult year for glob­al emer­gency response. Exam­ples in 2025 include dead­ly flood­ing which struck cen­tral Texas and wild­fires in Cal­i­for­nia, while Jamaica was dev­as­tat­ed by one of the strongest hur­ri­canes ever to make land­fall.

Russia’s Kam­chat­ka Penin­su­la also saw one of the most pow­er­ful earth­quakes ever record­ed and world­wide heat­wave records were shat­tered.

Mean­while, fund­ing for the USA’s Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA) and oth­er dis­as­ter relief agen­cies have become more lim­it­ed, road con­ges­tion wors­ened with Amer­i­cans spend­ing more time stuck in traf­fic than ever before and EMS response times con­tin­ued to lag in both urban areas and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. 

The safe, portable, auton­o­my-enabled air­craft in devel­op­ment by these teams in the GoAERO Prize will be used to res­cue peo­ple and respond to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, every­day med­ical emer­gen­cies and human­i­tar­i­an crises.

Gwen Lighter, GoAERO Founder and CEO, said: “The GoAERO air­craft are need­ed now more than ever. GoAERO was found­ed to cre­ate both the trans­for­ma­tive flight tech­nolo­gies that save lives, and the col­lab­o­ra­tive net­work across indus­try, gov­ern­ment, and first respon­der orga­ni­za­tions to ensure the safe and effec­tive future deploy­ment of these emer­gency response air­craft.”

GoAERO is cur­rent­ly com­posed of 201 teams from 85 coun­tries around the globe cre­at­ing their Emer­gency Response Fly­ers. Teams do not need to win a pre­vi­ous stage prize in order to con­tin­ue into the next round of the com­pe­ti­tion, and new teams can join the com­pe­ti­tion at any time, regard­less of whether or not they par­tic­i­pat­ed in pre­vi­ous stages.

The final GoAERO Fly-Off event will fea­ture three sep­a­rate mis­sions test­ing spe­cif­ic skills and capa­bil­i­ties rel­e­vant to pub­lic good mis­sions when an addi­tion­al $1.65 mil­lion will be award­ed to win­ning teams. 

The GoAERO Prize was launched in 2024 and with more than $2 mil­lion in prizes, the com­pe­ti­tion aims to cre­ate safe, portable, robust, auton­o­my-enabled fly­ers. Teams com­pet­ing in the GoAERO Prize will com­pete over a three-year peri­od and ben­e­fit from expert men­tor­ship, glob­al expo­sure, access to soft­ware, prod­ucts and ser­vices, and mon­e­tary prizes.

To reg­is­ter a team or learn more about the GoAERO Prize, please vis­it: GoAEROprize.com.